What a week!

Man...it's been a long week already and it's only...well now it's Wednesday. :P 

Sunday I was getting ready to print sticker sheet orders on my Romeo...except the black plastic piece of the tensioner (the part that tightens the blade holder in place) broke in half. I found ONE place online that sells it as a replacement part...so I got that ordered. The bad news is that it won't get here until Friday. I really hate when there's no option to purchase expedited shipping. I have a ton of orders that have to be shipped before Friday. I was worried that I was going to have to start cutting them one at a time on my Cricut. My Cricut Maker 3 absolutely sucked for sticker sheets, but I haven't tried making them on my Maker 4. I've just been using my Siser Romeo for sticker sheets (it works perfectly to cut four 5x7 sticker sheets at one time) and then I use my Cricut Maker 4 for my stickers and magnets. 

So anyway...Sunday night, I ended up using a little bit of Gorilla super glue gel to see if it would hold the two broken halves together. I let it sit overnight to fully dry before I tried using it. I had four sticker sheet orders that I needed to send out on Monday, so that morning I held my breath and cut the sticker sheets using the super-glued tensioner...and thank goodness it worked. I stopped after the sheets due Monday and got all my orders packaged so I could go to the post office. I had to buy some shipping boxes for my large notepad orders. When there's just a few notepads, I can ship them in the pretty bubble mailers. I bought with my eBay refund, but larger orders need a box. I bought some 11x8x6 and 10x603 boxes and they worked out perfectly. 

I usually just put my orders in our mailbox (we have a locked cluster box) and any poly bubble mailers I put in our mailbox with a note for our mail carrier (who is pretty wonderful, btw) that it's outgoing mail, but the boxes won't fit. So I took the packages in to be scanned and dropped off the envelopes. I had a lot of sticker and magnet orders from the weekend (mostly custom name stickers and magnets) so I worked on those the rest of the day and put them in the mailbox before I went to bed. 

Today was the real test. I had 12 sticker sheet orders that were due tomorrow (well...now it's today)...and luckily my super-glued Romeo cut all six 11x17 pages without any problem. Thank goodness! So tomorrow I should--hopefully--be able to get the rest of my sticker sheet orders out that are due the 13th and 14th and then I'll have the new part on Friday. 

My new chair arrives today! I'm really excited...hopefully it'll help with the pain and discomfort. My JellieBody should arrive on Friday...so hopefully between the two I'll be able to find some relief.  Especially considering I have some more notebooks to make this week, too. 

Well...I suppose I should get some sleep so I can get orders done tomorrow. :)

Busy August so far!

I've been super busy with work lately! At least this year I kind of expected it. Last year I had a huge influx of orders for the back-to-school season. Between the custom stickers in my CandiMakerStickers shop and the custom name label sticker sheets in my CandiMakerPlanners shop (in addition to my regular orders), July and August were my best months of 2025 for both numbers of orders and revenue.

This year, I had nine less orders in July 2026 compared to July 2025, but my revenue was almost $300 higher in July 2026. And for the first seven days of August, I've had nine more orders and $214 more in revenue this year than I did during the same time period last year. 

One thing that made a difference this year is that in July I added tear-off notepads to the products I offer...and I got two large orders for them earlier this week. As I'm writing this...I'm in my office printing 56 notepads that will go out on Monday. One order was for 41 of my notebook paper design notepads personalized with teacher names and then another order for 15 of my notepads personalized with names in "signature" fonts that they ordered with magnets on the back. I'm very thankful for the large orders! :) A lot of my sales are single-product orders, so I like to encourage larger orders with buy-more-save-more discount codes.  

I'll be finished with all the notepads tomorrow...then I'll spend Sunday printing and cutting the rest of my regular sticker, magnet, and sticker sheet orders. And then I package all the orders before I go to bed so they're picked up by USPS on Monday. 

I think adding new products periodically has helped my growth each year. The first year, I was mostly focused on creating new sticker designs. But after I decided to offer the option of magnets for each of my sticker designs during my second year, I saw a large increase in orders and revenue. Since then, I've tried to add new products each year. I have several new product ideas floating around in my head right now...but I haven't worked on new designs of existing products for several months, so I'll probably use any free time I have to focus on that through the end of the year. February and April are usually pretty slow months for me, so I'll probably hold off on any new products until then. 

One thing I've noticed while I've been spending a lot more time in my office (at one time, anyway) is that this chair is UNCOMFORTABLE. My elbow hurts, my knees and hips hurt, my back hurts...everything hurts. :P So I finally decided to go ahead and get a new office chair. Having hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I really need something that's versatile. I looked at a lot of different kinds of chairs, but I settled on this one from Walmart. I really hope it helps. 

I also decided to try some compression products...the JellieBody and Korform shorts. So many people in the hEDS community have talked about them helping with pain, stability, and dysautonomia...so since I've had such a successful summer with work, I decided to finally order them. My back, hips, and knees have really been bothering me lately (in addition to my neck, but they probably won't help with that). Johnny and I did get some new pillows, though. He saw an article that talked about these pillows so I decided why not...couldn't be any worse than the old pillows that we've been using for, like, a decade. There were mixed reviews, but I was hopeful...and so far we've not been disappointed! I've been having a lot less neck pain. I had to remove some of the stuffing, but it's a lot more supportive for my neck and head. So I'm pretty happy about that. 

And since I've been having such a good July and start to August...I splurged and got something that's pretty much just cosmetic for my desk. :P My desk is 18 years old and the desktop is definitely showing it's age. My binding machine also caused a pretty big scratch before I realized it had a sharp spot on the bottom. So...I was looking for a desk mat that would cover the desktop...but the sizing was pretty limiting. I actually ended up finding this mouse pad that works pretty perfectly. It doesn't go across the whole desktop, but it definitely covers the part that shows the most wear. 

I did take a bit of a break from work last weekend to celebrate my husband's birthday! It's the 29th anniversary of Johnny's 29th birthday. ;) We had dinner at Village Inn with Aubry (and Danny), Ashlyn, mom, and my grandparents. Then we came home to put our leftovers in the fridge and let the dogs out to pee before going over to my grandparents' house to play Flip 7 with my mom and grandparents. It was the first time Johnny and I had played...and we had a lot of fun. :)

Well...I finally finished the first order of notepads, so I think I'm going to head to bed so I can get started again early tomorrow on the second notepad order. I hope everyone has a good weekend! :) 

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